Gordon Pask

Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask (28 June 1928 – 29 March 1996) was a British cybernetician, inventor and polymath who made during his lifetime multiple contributions to cybernetics, educational psychology, educational technology, epistemology, chemical computing, architecture, and the performing arts.

During his life he gained three doctorate degrees.

He was an avid writer, with more than two hundred and fifty publications which included a variety of journal articles, books, periodicals, patents, and technical reports (many of which can be found at the main Pask archive at the University of Vienna).

He also worked as an academic and researcher for a variety of educational settings, research institutes, and private stakeholders including but not limited to the University of Illinois, Concordia University, the Open University, Brunel University and the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

He is known for the development of conversation theory.

Pask was born in Derby, England, on June 28, 1928, to his parents Percy and Mary Pask.

His father was "a partner in Pask, Cornish and Smart, a wholesale fruit business in Covent Garden".

He had two older siblings: Alfred, who trained as an engineer before becoming a Methodist minister, and Edgar, a professor of anesthetics.

His family moved to the Isle of Wight shortly after his birth.

He was educated at Rydal Penrhos.

According to Andrew Pickering and G. M. Furtado Cardoso Lopes, school taught Pask to "be a gangster" and he was noted for having designed bombs during his time at Rydal Penrhos which was delivered to a government ministry in relation to the war effort during the second world war.

He later went on to complete two diplomas in Geology and Mining Engineering from Liverpool Polytechnic and Bangor University respectively.

Pask later attended Cambridge University around 1949 to study for a bachelor's degree, where he met his future associate and business partner Robin McKinnon-Wood who was studying his undergraduate in Maths and Physics at the time.

At the time, Pask was living in Jordan's Yard, Cambridge under the supervision of the scientist and engineer John Brickell.

During this time, Pask was more known for his work in the arts and musical theatre rather than his later pursuits in science and education.

He became interested in cybernetics and information theory in the early 1950s when Norbert Wiener was asked to give a presentation on the subject for the university.

Between the early to mid-1950s, Pask began to develop electrochemical devices designed to find their own "relevance criteria".

Pask performed experiments utilizing "electrochemical assemblages, passing current through various aqueous solutions of metallic salts (e.g. ferrous sulfate) in order to construct an analog control system".

During the late 1950s, Pask managed to get a prototype device working.

Oliver Selfridge noted that it was the second such mechanism, whereby "a machine build a machine electronically without any physical motion", actually worked.

He eventually obtained an MA in natural sciences from the university in 1952, and met his future wife Elizabeth Pask (née Poole) around this time at the birthday party of a mutual friend when she was studying at Liverpool University and he was visiting his father in Wallasey, Mersey.

In 1953, Pask formally founded alongside his wife Elizabeth and Robin McKinnon-Wood the research organization System Research Ltd., in Richmond, Surrey.

According to McKinnon-Wood, his and Pask's early forays in musical comedy production at Cambridge through their earlier company Sirelelle lay the groundwork for his later company which they viewed as being "wholly consistent with the development of self-adaptive systems, self-organizing systems, man-machine interactions[,] etc".

They married in 1956 and later had two daughters together.

In September 1958 in Namur, Belgium, he attended the second International Congress of Cybernetics.

Pask was first introduced to Heinz von Foerster during this time, who were both informed by the attendees of the conference of having submitted similar papers.

After searching for Pask through the streets of Namur, von Foerster described his first observation of Pask as that of a "leprechaun in a black double-breasted jacket over a white shirt with a black bow tie, puffing a cigarette through a long cigarette holder, and fielding questions, always with a polite smile, that were tossed at him from all directions".

von Foerster later asked Pask to join him at the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois; subsequently describing him after his death as both being difficult and yet a genius.

He also this year produced SAKI (self-adaptive keyboard machine) for the instruction and development of keyboard skills aimed at the commercial marketplace.

His former research assistant Bernard Scott argues that "The Mechanisation of Thought Processes" conference at the National Physics Laboratory in Teddington, London represented a critical point in the development of Pask's thinking: It was here Pask first published his paper "Physical Analogues to the Growth of a Concept" (1959) which contained a theoretical discussion on how the "growth of crystals [through the use of] electrodes suspended in an electronic solution", could be used to represent in purely physical phenomenon the growth of a concept.

Warren McCulloch wrote in relation to the presentation that: "[Pask's] gadget does work; it does "take habbits" by a mechanism that Charles Peirce proposed".

During the later years of this period, Pask had begun to describe himself as a mechanic philosopher to emphasize both the theoretical and experimental aspects of his role.

During the 1960s, Pask worked significantly with psychologist B. N. Lewis and computer scientist G. L. Mallen.

After rebranding the company to System Research Ltd., the company became non-profit in 1961 with significant funding being derived from the United States Army and Airforce.

Throughout its existence, the company conducted a variety of research and development initiatives on behalf of civil service organizations and research councils in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

During the active period of System Research Ltd., he and his associates worked on a number of projects including SAKI (self-adaptive keyboard machine), MusiColour (a light show where the colored lights would reduce their responsiveness to a given keyboard input over time so as to induce the keyboard player to play a different range of notes), and finally educational technologies such as CASTE (Couse Assembly System Tutorial Environment) and Thoughtsticker (both of which were developed in the context of what became conversation theory).

During this period, Pask and McKinnon-Wood were asked to demonstrate their proof of concept for MusiColour on behalf of Billy Butlin.

While the machine initially worked when the duo sought to demonstrate the technology to Butlin's deputy, after his arrival "it exploded in a cloud of white smoke", due to McKinnon-Wood "buying junk electronic capacitors".

The duo managed to restart the machine; after which McKinnon-Wood purports Butlin to have remarked if such a machine could withstand an explosion like that, it must be reliable.

Stafford Beer also claims to have met Pask sometime during this period at a dinner party in Sheffield, and notes of both his genius, the difficulty in following his thought, and getting hold of; remarking both that "[Pask's] conception of things is not anyone else's perception of things", and that "The man can be quite infuriating".